There is a pretty nasty domain name appraisal scam going around that you need to be aware of if you own domain names. The scammer’s only intent is to make money from a domain name appraisal service, which is fake. Furthermore, the scammer, Roland Gordan, and Authority-ICANN.org, tries to make it look like the real ICANN.org is offering domain name appraisals. This is a scam, and domain name owners should not fall for this online scheme.

There have been reports that Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox web browser, is working on a device similar to Google’s Chromecast, a media streaming stick. Brad Linder reported that “Mozilla is working on a small stick that you can plug into a TV to stream internet videos or other content while using the Firefox web browser on your phone or other device as a remote.”

And now we may have the answer to what it may be called. Why? Mozilla Media domain names were just registered by Mozilla. The company just registered: [Read more…]

Well, by now you probably know about how I feel about domains with hyphens in them. If you don’t, then you may want to read my post about a test that was done regarding domain names with hyphens. That certainly opened up my eyes, and now I prefer domains without hyphens in them. So, when I saw today that Microsoft registered two domain names with hyphens in them (multiple hyphens), and they didn’t purchase the domains without hyphens, I cringed. [Read more…]

The Domainer’s Choice Awards are taking place this evening, here in Dana Point, California, at the Dana Point Yacht Club. I had the wonderful opportunity today to help set up for this evening’s event, and plan on live blogging the event. I’ll be posting an update either during the event or right after the event (depending on internet/wifi access availability). I will also post the final results of the awards as soon as they’re available.

Google is getting ready to launch Google Domains, where you can get a website, web hosting, and a website editor like Wix.com (which is very SEO-unfriendly, by the way). And, Google is pitching the purchase of a shiny, new gTLD (Top Level Domain). But, instead of calling them what they really are (gTLDs), Google describe them like this: [Read more…]

When it comes to playing by the new rules, Microsoft apparently has thrown in the towel. There apparently aren’t any new rules anymore. And Microsoft has decided, for whatever reason, that they don’t want to play by the new rules anymore. At least when it comes to domain names.

Of the 19 domain names that Microsoft has failed to renew in the past 24 hours, there are three that apparently Microsoft doesn’t want anymore. They haven’t renewed these names, meaning that you soon can “play by the new rules”: [Read more…]

Back in mid May, right after the European ruling came down related to the “right to remove” your details from Google, a mysterious domain name called CookieChoices.org was registered. The whois record showed that it was, in fact, owned by Google and pointed to their name servers. [Read more…]

There are reports that ICANN is now taking websites offline because of failures to verify ones’ email address. A popular website, JitBit.com, was recently taken offline because they failed to verify the site’s email address as listed in the whois record.

According to Jitbit.com, their website was offline for nearly 30 minutes, and showed the following: